Relativizers in Shakespeare's Drama : A Sociolinguistic Study(Winner of Murayama Award for Best Young Scholar,Kanto Review of English Literature)

抄録

The aim of this paper is to shed new light upon relativisers in Shakespeare's drama frm a sociolinguistic perspective, paying particular attention to gender and social class of the characters. This paper focuses primarily on the ratio of wh-relativizers, which serves as a useful indicator of formality. We reveal that the sociolinguistic backgrounds of the characters exert influence on the distribution of relativizers in a way that seems to reflect the educational inequalities prevalent in Shakespeare's time: wh-relativizers occur most frequently in the speech of gentry, somewhat less frequently in the speech of gentry women, while non-gentry, men and women alike, make fairly limited use of them. We also demonstrate that our findings are useful as tools for interpreting the language of several characters. For example, examining the ratio of wh-relativizers and the use of a collocation consisting of a preposition plus a relativizer (e.g. on whom), it is suggested that Bottom (in A Midsummer Night's Dream) speaks in a way that fits the role he is given (i.e as a nobleman). The case of Prince Henry also illustrates a notable phenomenon in which discourse situations play a major role in the distribution of relativizers.